Avatar star Zoe Saldaña says that the audition process for the 2009 blockbuster was a surreal one. Saldaña, who is reprising her role as Na’vi heroine Neytiri in the upcoming sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, recounted her strange experience of auditioning for the first film while appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The actress, 44, shared that the Alita: Battle Angel-esque character descriptions she had received made her uncertain about the role, but she decided to continue with the audition process anyway.
“I was still living in New York at the time, and they would put me on tape,” Saldaña said, recounting the various, seemingly random tasks requested of her by casting directors Mali Finn and Margery Simkin. “Sometimes it was like ‘Bring some tight stuff, I want you to climb and do some cartwheels.’ And I’m like ‘okay.’ So I would come in, it’s like, ‘We’ll, we’ll just play. Let’s move some furniture.’
“I feel like I was able to book the part because of [my dance background]. Then one time, they called me in and put myself on tape again for them, and they were like, ‘just make all these sounds,'” the star continued, rolling her Rs flawlessly. “I’m thinking like, James Cameron, a robot warrior princess that’s in the jungle, and I’m…rolling my Rs, I don’t know what this is, but I dig it.”
Saldaña Recounts First Meeting with Cameron: ‘I’m Having an Out of Body Experience’
Though Saldaña may not have understood all the hoops she was jumping through on her audition tapes, the actress performed well enough to be flown to Los Angeles to meet with director James Cameron. Once she arrived, things somehow got even more surreal as she thumbed through the nearly two-inch thick script.
“They lock me in an office, which was a bit, a bit scary, and they gave me the script…They gave me three hours to read it, I took six. Because it was just, all the direction describing the whole world of Pandora was really bizarre to me. English is not my first language, so that was a little hard,” she recalled.
But the most nerveracking moment of all? Meeting Cameron, who Saldaña referred to as her “idol,” and seeing the iconic movie props casually displayed in his office.
“Then Jim walks in, and he was so nice. He said, ‘are you ready to meet yourself?’ And I was like, ‘what?’ At that moment, my soul like left my body. Then he walks me to his office, I see this big [steering] wheel of a ship, I had no idea it was the Titanic wheel. I see the arm of the Terminator. I just, I was like, oh my god, I’m having an out-of-body experience,” she said, noting that there was another soon-to-be iconic prop in their presence.
“On the coffee table was a sculpture of my character, Neytiri. As I’m observing the sculpture, he’s sitting across from me like observing me. And I’m thinking like, ‘that’s not weird, that’s not weird, don’t act weird.'”
As weird as the audition process may have been, Saldaña was offered the part a couple weeks later; Avatar would go on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time.
Starring Saldaña, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, and Kate Winslet, Avatar: The Way of Water hits theaters December 16.
